In This Economy?

This morning it was revealed that JPMorgan Chase, yet another of the long list of banks that received a massive government bailout, will be spending more than $135 million to purchase two luxury private jets and renovate an airplane hangar in Westchester, New York.

“It’s cool though guys, we’ve been saving up for these”

According to a spokesman, the crippled bank will not be using any of the $25 billion in bailout money they received to purchase these items. So that means they just had $138 million sitting around for a rainy day? Did they do a corporate jet/hangar renovation bake sale? Does JPMorgan Chase have a bunch of other money sitting around? Why the fuck did we bail them out if their private jet fund is so robust?

I’m getting bogged down with questions. Let me get back on track here.

So, to recap, they are buying two Gulfstream 650 jets for $60 million each and spending $18 million to renovate an airplane hangar (it’s going to have a vegetated roof garden…WTF?!??!), BUT they are not spending any of the bailout money to do this.

Unfortunately my problem with this has nothing to do with the money. I don’t care if they buy five Gulfstream 650s or renovate ten hangars. Go ahead and buy a stealth bomber for all I care, just don’t do it right now.

Business moves fast. Witch hunts move faster.

Now I understand that the business world moves quickly. JPMorgan Chase needs these jets to conduct business in the manner they are accustomed to (though they should get accustomed to sitting in coach on AirTran). They need the jets to keep their business moving forward. And this applies now more than ever because the recession and subsequent destruction of several financial firms has leveled the playing field, creating lots of new competition.

So, if JPMorgan Chase doesn’t install their vegetative roof garden soon, the dickheads at the Merrill Lynch hangar next door might have theirs up first. And then JPMC just looks like a bunch of shitty copycats.

I also understand that the media and the bloggers (me included) are engaging in a good old fashioned witch hunt right now. The public is so disgusted by the state of the economy that scapegoats are being sought. And, whether it’s fair or not, a lot of these financial firms are becoming those scapegoats.

I understand these two things very clearly. And I assumed the decision makers over at JPMorgan Chase understood them too, until I read about these planes.

So let me take a second to quickly educate them.

JPMorgan decision makers, this next part is for you:

The business world moves quicky, as I said above, but nothing will slow it all down faster than a scandal. Ask AIG about that. Instead of postponing plans to upgrade your air fleet, you went ahead. And now, because of the previously mentioned witch hunt, you’re going to be knee deep in the media’s shit for at least a week (or longer if another bailed out company doesn’t fuck up to get the heat off of you).

Now in the future, you’ll undoubtedly hear people talk about how Merrill Lynch’s roof arugula is the best roof arugula around, and that will sting. But just know that you guys could have had the premiere roof arugula garden had you just waited for the economy to improve. Now you’re going to be bogged down in this controversy and will probably wind up having to postpone the renovations indefinitely.

Nice work.

There. Maybe that will get through to them.

Oh, wait. What’s that I hear? Oh, it’s JPMorgan Chase Chairman, Jamie Dimon. He’s saying something…

“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America I personally don’t understand it”

Aw fuck. These guys are hopeless.

Tags: airplanes, bailout, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, roof arugula

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 2:16 PM and is filed under Bad News, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.